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For Immediate Release
UMC SERVES SYSTEM DESIGN HOUSE REQUIREMENTS VIA NEW ASICplus PROGRAM
Foundry Aligns with Key Fabless
ASIC Design Houses to Provide Turnkey ASIC Design through Production
Service
DesignCon, SANTA CLARA, Calif., February 1, 2000--UMC today launched its
ASICplus™ program that enables the leading semiconductor foundry
to better serve systems companies that develop products for the
communications and consumer space. UMC is offering enhanced
ASIC services through the formation of partnership agreements with
leading fabless ASIC partners that will manage the entire ASIC development
process. Current ASICplus partners for UMC include: Faraday
Technology, GlobalCAD, MacroTech Research, RealChip, and SSL.
"UMC understands that systems companies need a value-added alternative
for ASIC development," stated Jim Kupec, president of UMC (USA) and
head of worldwide marketing and sales. "To better serve these companies
needs, we have formalized the strong relationships we've held with
key fabless ASIC companies to provide full-service ASIC development
capabilities. Systems companies can have access to the same advanced
technologies and lower cost structure that until now have only been
enjoyed by fabless semiconductor companies. We are providing
systems companies with the cutting-edge technology they require, world
class manufacturing, a vast portfolio of intellectual property (IP)
and the design services they need to realize their SOC designs in
silicon."
UMC's
ASICplus program offers systems companies a flexible ASIC development
solution that includes design handoff at either the specification,
RTL, or netlist level, and the ability to embed customer specific
IP along with IP kitted from the ASICplus partner. In the
ASICplus program, UMC continues to focus on its core competencies
of technology development and manufacturing efficiency, while the
partners offer the full front-end and back-end services that many
customers require to bring their designs into production.
The program provides customers with the flexibility to choose support
for any part of their chip development process, from design specification,
determining which IP and libraries to utilize, through managing
final test and packaging.
"The
introduction of our ASICplus program is a ground-breaking event
for the foundry industry," noted Edward Wan, vice president of worldwide
field engineering for UMC. "Now, for the first time, a pure-play
semiconductor foundry is teaming up with fabless ASIC companies
to provide full ASIC service to multimillion dollar systems companies
as well as small- and medium- sized fabless companies. With
the launch of our program we have signed up top-caliber ASIC partners
in order to offer ASIC development capabilities worldwide.
When we started the ASICplus program, we sought out only those partners
that will bring real value to our customers. Each partner
specializes in a selected vertical market and provides system expertise
and embedded software capabilities, as well as silicon-proven IP
for the target market, and the ability to stitch them together in
a SOC implementation."
"UMC
is leading the fabless semiconductor industry by offering a whole
new level of capability to satisfy the customer-specific, system-on-chip
(SOC) needs of major systems companies," stated Craig Slayter, president
and CEO of custom communications chip maker RealChip Inc. "In this
effort, it is also providing RealChip's customers--leading networking
systems companies, suppliers, and start-ups--with a radically new
business model that provides lowest-risk, lowest-cost, and faster
time-to-market solutions for developing network SoCs. By participating
in UMC's ASICplus program, we can continue to provide our customers
with the seamless SOC development solutions they require, via our
end-to-end design and plug-and-play communication Reality Objects™,
and now we can also give them access to UMC's advanced semiconductor
process technologies. As a result, RealChip can deliver custom
communications chips developed on UMC's 0.18 micron and 0.15um processes
now, and smaller process geometries later this year."
Brian
Long, CEO of SSL, said that SSL's Wireless Internet Device market
is facing an integration challenge. "Delivering Bluetooth enabled
PDAs and Smartphones requires access to high performance CMOS processes
at very aggressive price-points," stated Long "The UMC ASICplus
program puts SSL is in a position to integrate a roadmap of cost-effective
system-level IP, from an RF-CMOS front-end through baseband and
software protocols running on advanced RISC or DSP architectures."
Companies
that are interested in UMC's ASICplus program should contact UMC's
ASICplus Hotline at 408-523-7859 or see http://www.umc.com
ASICplus
is a trademark of UMC. Reality Objects is a trademark of RealChip.
All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property
of their respective owners.
ASIC Partner Overview Document
Faraday
Technology,
Faraday an ISO 9001 certified company, headquartered in Taiwan,
with a full service ASIC engineering team in Santa Clara, Calif.
is a leading ASIC vendor that provides ASIC turn-key solutions with
silicon proven IP, multi-million gate design experience and SOC
methodology. To meet target market demands and offer customers
global processing capabilities, Faraday is working closely with
world leading semiconductor manufacturers and EDA vendors. Faraday
also provides standard cores, I/Os, libraries and high-value IP
targeted for analog, communication and microprocessors which includes
the most advanced 0.25um and 0.18um processes. Faraday has
successfully completed 700 designs over the last four years and
has customers in mass production in the market of Multimedia, DSP,
Image processing, GPSs, networking and embedded solutions.
www.faraday-usa.com
GlobalCAD based in Santa Clara, CA, and Taiwan, delivers high performance
and low cost SOC solutions for highly integrated embedded systems.
It also provides proven
synthesizable microprocessors, signal processors, peripheral and
interface devices and standard cell libraries, as well as complete
turnkey solutions to ASIC design companies. In addition, it
develops solutions for standard multimedia and communications products.
www.gcadinc.com
MacroTech
Research, headquartered in Fremont, CA and with turnkey operations
in Taiwan, offers comprehensive solutions that allow its customers
to utilize its IC design expertise to co-develop products and IP
for newly emerging and high-growth markets. The company, with
years experience on 0.18um and 0.25um designs, also focus on multi-million
gate SOC projects. The company's services include pure layout, ASIC
development expertise, to foundry support at quasi COT pricing but
Virtual ASIC?service quality. Target customers are in the
consumer entertainment and programmable game console markets.
www.macrotechnic.com
RealChip
Inc.
RealChip Inc. provides one-stop custom communications chips, specializing
in network systems-on-chip (SOC). RealChip manages and takes responsibility
for total chip design, production and delivery, using manufacturing,
EDA, and intellectual property (IP) partnerships with leading suppliers.
To rapidly and cost effectively deliver complex chips using advanced
process technologies, RealChip has extensive expertise and methodology
for integration of IP into SoCs and has specially "kitted" selected
IP into communication "Reality Objects™ " for plug-and-play
into customer's designs. RealChip is headquartered in Sunnyvale,
Calif. and has a design center in India.
www.realchip.com
SSL,
headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, and with its world sales headquarters
in San Jose, CA, is a proven supplier of system-level intellectual
property and SOCs for Internet Appliances in the wireless communications
and consumer multimedia markets. The company provides a roadmap
of mixed-signal and DSP IP, combined with tailored application software
to enable complete system solutions
www.sslinc.com
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